Higgins opened the door and started through the lobby and up the main corridor toward the pharmacy. His brain was reeling. He was dizzy.
Two Cub Sterlings! God Almighty! Suppose she was lying? Suppose? ... She was too frightened to leave, though.... The best thing to do was sit tight and look over the pharmacy staff.
When Snod Smooty came back on Ward B, he found two student nurses on duty and the women remarkably quiet. They were still subdued by the grandness of Dr. Cub Sterling’s leaving his dying father to come to see about them. They were excited over his furrowed face and his sudden ageing. They didn’t call it that, but they felt it, profoundly. To the funeral-wake-type, death is always as exciting as birth, and the death of a famous doctor....
Snod tiptoed up to lower a window shade near Lil Parkins’ bed. She was sleeping peacefully and contentedly. The same feeling of admiration which the other women had experienced for Cub Sterling had taken the form of protective relaxation in Lil Parkins. He would see that nothing happened to her. He had told her to go to sleep.
An expression of sudden warmth lay over the colorless features of Snod Smooty as he looked at Lil. A grand girl, Lil! And a swell detective! Do anything for a pal. Nursed him through pneumonia last fall, just because he was her friend....
The day orderly beckoned to him and he went back to washing dishes. They worked quietly and with the doors closed. One of the nurses came to say she was going off the floor a minute.
The day orderly was a squashy fellow who talked all the time. Snod had known it soon as he set eyes on him. He finished the saucers and left the man still talking. His garrulousness had put Snod’s nerves on the jump and he was hungry, too.
Three-thirty and the fool wouldn’t leave him long enough to get even a bottle of cream outa the ice box! Maybe a cigarette would help....
Snod eased over toward the door and through it. Halfway up the ward corridor, he caught sight of chubby Bessie Ellis sitting up in her crib and playing with a doll ... exactly like the two Dr. MacArthur had shown them yesterday.
He ran noiselessly to her crib and smiled at her. They were friends immediately. As he passed the medicine closet he saw the single student nurse coming out of the nurses’ lavatory.